The Conformist

Although Bernardo Bertolucci became an internationally acclaimed director in his own right, he drew many inspirations from the work of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Beginning his career as Pasolini’s assistant, Bertolucci’s interest in psychoanalysis and Marxism closely resembled that of his mentor.

Many of Pasolini’s films conveyed his beliefs that “the achievement of self-consciousness comes from specifically sexual encounters,” – an idea clearly rooted in Freudian theory. Teorema, for example, is the story of a visitor who “makes love successively with a servant, the son, the mother, the daughter, and the father.” During the course of the film, we see how each member of the family is changed by this experience and their true identities are revealed. Compared to this rather eccentric representation of Freud’s theories on sexuality, Bertolucci takes a more orthodox approach.

While sexuality is a key theme in many of his films (The Conformist, Last Tango in Paris, The Dreamers etc.) Bertolucci chooses to explore Freud’s concepts more subtly, in fact, almost unconsciously – fitting with Freud’s theory of the unconscious. This is illustrated in the plot of The Conformist. Bertolucci admits that what started off as a joke – he used Godard’s phone number and address for the residence of the Quadris in Paris – became an unconscious desire to destroy a surrogate father figure. In the same way that Marcello (Jean-Louis Trintigant) kills Professor Quadri, Bertolucci symbolically destroys Jean-Luc Godard, his “revolutionary teacher.”

The Oedipus complex may be considered the primary concept explored in The Conformist. Not only is it represented through Marcello’s destruction of Professor Quadri, but also through the motif of blindness, which reiterates the story of Oedipus blinding himself after discovering he has slept with his own mother. Marcello’s friend Italo is blind, as is the woman selling flowers outside the Hotel D’Orsay.  Furthermore, the theme of blindness is reinforced by Bertolucci’s use of light and shadow throughout the film, especially in the scenes at his fiancées home, the asylum where his father is held, and the forest where the Quadris are assassinated.

A final exploration of Freudian concepts is Bertolucci’s use of non-linear narration. The disruptive chronology of the film, created through flashbacks, can be associated with Freud’s beliefs about repressed memories. It is clear that Marcello’s traumatic sexual encounters are the driving force behind his current state of introspection, which takes place primarily in the car with Manganiello. It seems that his inability to come to terms with these experiences directly leads him to going through with the murder of the Quadris. His search for normality/conformity was an inadequate defense mechanism not powerful enough to abate his long-term anxiety and so murdering the Quadris became the only solution: a symbolic destruction of the trauma that had haunted him for so long.
However, the film ends with the fall of fascism, and Marcello comes face to face with the man he thought he killed when he was thirteen. In a single moment, he escapes his guilt, renounces fascism, and abandons his friend Italo to a marching crowd of anti-fascists. We have to wonder if this is Marcello's absolution, has he truly resolved his trauma? Because, although he no longer feels guilt for his first murder, he has now just murdered the Quadris, so won't that just restore the same guilt he had just escaped? The film ends, therefore, with the audience wondering whether Marcello will ever truly reach an identity achievement, or if he will continue to be haunted by guilt and search for normality as 'the conformist.'